11/07/2025 08:30
- 17:30
HALL: Lecture Hall 21
Proponent:
Gallien C.
Chair:
Awad A.,
Demiri L.,
Schlenker C.
Speaker:
Gallien C.,
Hentschel Y.,
Kawanishi H.,
Kraneiß N.,
Rogers C.,
Saad E.,
Safi M.T.,
Sami M.,
Sinani B.
Since after World War 2, Europe has embraced what critical theory and philosophy described as a postmodern condition, marked by relativism of identities and values, fluidity, ambiguity, irony, disenchantment, and anti-foundational thinking. Postmodernism was also intended to function as a rebuttal to the myth of a single Eurocentric historical narrative as universally true. However, the military, economic, and epistemic hegemony of the Global North meant that postmodernism as an ontological and epistemic condition imposed itself globally.
To any believers, Jean-François Lyotard's definition of postmodernity as 'incredulity towards metanarratives' is counterintuitive to say the least. Indeed, theology or 'God-talk' constitutes precisely this meta- (i.e. transcendent) narrative. In addition, faith in God, and the cosmovision as well as the episteme that ensues from it, implies the belief in scriptural foundations (as opposed to anti-foundationalism), in clear demarcations between the ugly and the beautiful, the harmful and the beneficial (vs. relativism), and a perception of the world as God's to be preserved as His gift and re-enchanted as His signs (vs. disenchantment).
As a rejoinder to Bauer's insightful investigation of Islam as 'a culture of ambiguity', this panel asks what it means to posit, reclaim, problematise Islam as a 'culture of certainty' and how such a culture may repair and positively transform inner-selves and contemporary societies.
Panelists may pursue various venues of enquiries, including the definition of knowledge in Islam, its limits, foundations, tools, and claims; the concepts of certainty and 'anti-vagueness' in Islamic theology and philosophy; the removal of uncertainty in language, perception, and rational enquiries; the interplay between questions of certainty and truth and questions of genres and disciplines; the relation between certainty and mysticism.
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